Thursday, April 29, 2010

Bath continued their great run of form as they beat Wasps 35-19 at Twickenham in front of 60 000 fans for St Georges day. The bonus point win moved them to fourth place in the Guinness Premiership.

Bath’s Kiwi wing Joe Maddock scored a hat-trick of tries, two of which came from excellent handling. The third, an intercept from a loose pass, was more regulation but just as important.

Olly Barkley in the midfield had a great day out as he kicked 15 points and earned the man of the match award for his general all round play. He’s admitted that he still has England ambitions.

"I've never given up on England and I'd love to go on the tour," said Barkley. "I've missed playing for my country, but the priority for me is getting Bath to the Premiership final," he added.

Coach Steve Meehan was delighted with the win, but is keeping a level head.

"There's a lot of rugby yet; a lot of things can happen. There's the small matter of a match against Leeds who have been playing well, dogging it out. But we've always believed that we could win these last three games. The players have done very well to achieve that," he said.

As for Wasps, they were wearing a special St George’s Day kit, but the loss has all but ruined their hopes of achieving a play-off place. They do however have European hopes, as they face Cardiff Blues on Saturday.

You can view highlights from all the other Guinness Premiership matches via the Omnisport player on the sidebar. You can also get Guinness Premiership Final tickets through us with Viagogo and our 5% discount. Use the voucher code VGGDUMP5 when buying to qualify.

There in lies the problem in the GP; all the good players are imports;

Look at wasps simpson and cipriani; both crap and it showed;

GP needs to nurtur the English players for a few years stop importing, expect and take the hit it gives on the european level for a few years but in ten years time they might have some really good home grown talent.

At the moment the GP is much like English Premiership in football. All the great players are foreign and as a result there is no good talent being nurtured or given the game time they need to make it on the big stage.

Too many clubs with too much money spending it on the wrong players; aka looking at next season insted of making a five/ten year plan.

1. "The good weather has resulted in the improvement in the rugby being played" - RedYeti

= the improvement in the rugby being played came after Referees were instructed to disregard the IRBs change to the refereeing of the breakdown and again give the attacking team the advantage

2. "Young English 10s can't tackle"

= before Wilkinson 10s were often weak defensive links. And many still are. Cipriani is particularly soft here. Lamb has tightened this up a lot since his disastrous appearance in the Prem final against Leicester and their Pacific Island wrecking balls. It certainly isn't true of Toby Flood, or of younger players like Joe Ford, Alex Goode and Freddie Burns.

3. "Cipriani isn't very good. Lacks vision" - Anonymous

= After two horrible injuries Ciprianis form dropped off a mountain. Unfortunately after his early performances had attracted so much hype (because they were phenomenal) he was under a spotlight and continues to be judged on these recovery performances. In this match he appeared to try too hard. But more than anything he was playing behind a beaten pack. He'll be fine in the S14:http://tiny.cc/j691mhttp://tiny.cc/c3rtr

4. "There are too many imports in the Prem. Not enough young English players"

= Young English players who emerged this season, play regularly and put their hands up for future international calls:

Wasps and Irish don't add any players to the list. But both have a strong English element to their squad, including many players with a good number of years ahead of them, be it Barkley, the Armitages, Paice, Corbisero... try harder and I bet you can name a raft of exciting young English players in the Prem.

Just to point out to the Hackney Griffen that Joe Simpson does in fact play for Wasps and so we have added at least one player to your list ;->. I'd also go and add Dom Waldouck to that list - he's been having a fantastic season for us.

Regardless, you make a great point. There is a huge amount of young English talent in the English game at the moment (as a Scot this worries me a little, but as a Wasps fan I'm pleased).

Whoops - also meant to lodge a quick comment on the game (I haven't watched the clip as the game was painful enough live). Bath played extremely well - all over the park. In fact, they looked like a Wasps team from a few years ago: rock solid in defence, and lethal with the chances they were given. Luke Watson did have a big game, as did James and Barkley.

As a Wasps fan - we did everything we could to help Bath along (in fact, we looked like a Bath team from a few years ago - how many dropped passes and knock ons do you need in a game?). I don't mind losing when you're just outplayed (and we were). But all the aforementioned dropped passes, the missed tackles (which have crept in of late) and some questionable decision making made me angry. We're better than that, and we'll need to be against Cardiff.

i'm sorry.. do english young player as good as the youngster of super 14? look at the crusader..how many superb young player they have, the cihef has aaron cruden, and the australian..berrick barnes, quade coooper, n JOC..didn't mention the faingaa's brothers. the are all international level. but GP. still a GP players

o'gara has a robot leg. his consistency in his kicking make him one of the best fly half in the world. cipriani, well not good enough. n why abendannon not been called up in englang squad. i'm sure he's prove too much to be in england squad. i think he is better than delon

um not really, the guy has been playing high class rugby in hong kong well before he got into nottingham uni, he played for hong kong rugby 1st team at a high standard before he got into nottingham....

...so...yeh, good on nottingham, but definately not a product of them!

Most useless player going around is that bath winger, banahan? Shocking. God it was funny when England used him against the AB's last year. Yea he's tall, but hes about as fast and light on his feet as a prop. The new Lomu ay?